


Falling Behing

by chaotic_blue_dissonance



Series: JuLance Challenge 2019 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Don't worry, Drabble, Gen, Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, I love him, Insecure Lance (Voltron), JuLance, Julance 2019, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, but i low-key needed to vent, i love lance, next one is much happier, there isn't much happiness in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-22 07:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19662808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaotic_blue_dissonance/pseuds/chaotic_blue_dissonance
Summary: Lance was always, always just behind Keith. Just barely second place, always scraping at first, but Keith was always one step ahead of him. Why Keith? Lance felt like he was always falling just behind Keith, who was always that once step ahead of him...





	Falling Behing

It.. It just wasn’t fair.

Lance worked just as hard as the other kids that wanted to be fighter pilots, yet he was the one that always fell just short. Every time. With every attempt at the simulator- it was never enough. It wasn’t even enough to tip anything in his favor, but just enough to keep Lance placed as second best in comparison to Keith Kogane.

Keith Kogane who soared ahead of him and even had Shiro to mentor him. At least, that was what Lance heard. Keith made it look so easy, it was enraging. He got praise from everyone when he wasn’t getting scolded for being so temperamental. From the directors, from his classmates, from Shiro… and the boy didn’t even seem to care about anyone else’s opinions. Nobody but Shiro, and it was infuriating.

Then again, Lance wasn’t going to be the one to verbally admit how much it hurt to be compared to Keith. To always be second best. Ever since Keith enrolled, it was like Lance didn’t even exist. He only seemed to exist when it was convenient to someone who wanted to get out of a conversation.

Lance wasn’t going to admit that he felt loneliest when Keith was around, not out loud.

Looking at the board to find that he was, once again, right behind Keith, only reinforced the feeling.

“Wow, look! I jumped ahead of Griffin!” Lance thought that it was.. yeah, Rizavi talking.

“Aw man, I’m back in last place.” Lance actually couldn’t place that voice.

“Look at that. Kogane’s still in first place.” Ugh.

“Yeah, he really is the best pilot of our generation. No one’s been able to top him since he got here.” Lance didn’t even want to know who that was.

Keith had a lot more admirers since getting into the Garrison, too. And watching him avoid them and ignore them like he didn’t care really made Lance’s blood boil. 

The worst part was when Keith himself looked at the board and didn’t even crack a smile. No happy little hum, no raised eyebrows, no physical reaction. Keith just lazily eyed the board and then walked away without a second glance. Like he was bored. It just felt so unfair.

Lance couldn’t even do anything about it. Keith was always in the simulator when he wasn’t, they studied the same material, did similar practices… but Keith always won. And Lance always lost. 

Lance could only sit in his bunk, face scrunched up in his frustration with Hunk on the way back after finishing his test. His results wouldn’t come out until later, but Hunk didn’t even care about this stuff all that much. While he was passionate about his areas of expertise, he didn’t get that upset, not in the way Lance did. It was just so pathetic. 

Luckily for Lance, Hunk didn’t think he was pathetic. Hunk sat beside him with a hand on his back as he rambled on and on about.. everything. There was no way that Lance was going to tell his mama about his situation, about always being second place, much less about how upset he was getting over it.

“It’s just.. It’s like he doesn’t even care that he’s always first. He doesn’t care that he’s progressing so much faster than everyone, or that he’s reaching higher levels.” He rambled on, eyes the slightest bit teary as he spoke on. “It’s like.. no matter how hard I study o-or practice or anything.. it’s like I’m destined to fall short every time. Like I’m destined to always be second best, the second choice, the first loser.” His voice was thick with the tears he was holding back, his nose itching like he was going to sneeze, but Lance knew it was because of how hard he was trying to hold back tears.

Lance could only wait and desperately hope that there was something his friend would say, anything that would make him feel like he was being silly and over dramatic, and Lance knew that he was being over dramatic. James probably didn’t cry every time Nadia got above him. Ina didn’t cry when Nadia got all in her face about being better. Hunk didn’t cry every time he had to get in a simulator of sorts (although he did get a bit teary eyed from the motion sickness). Lance was being silly because he felt like this one kid, this one boy, was always going to one up.

And Lance would always be invisible because of it.

But Hunk didn’t say anything. All he did was pull Lance close and wrap his arms around him in a hug.

It was that moment that Lance decided that he hated Keith Kogane and everything about him. After that, anytime Keith showed up, instead of wanting to shrink into nothing, he got angry and made himself the star. Instead of letting Keith get to the simulator, Lance would be there, peeved as he dodged his way through the courses. And instead of crying when he was second place, he would get that much more frustrated and work that much harder, because it would eventually pay off.

And, eventually, it did.

It was just enough to pass into fighter class, but Lance managed to beat Keith at something. In fact, Keith’s name wasn’t even on the board! It felt like a genuine accomplishment. Lance even danced a little, all smiles and grins as he learned that Hunk was his engineer, too!

Only to learn, after his first simulation with his team, that the only reason Lance managed to make fighter class was because Keith was cast out for disciplinary issues. At that point, it felt like he was cheating. Like he didn’t even deserve to be a fighter pilot.

In the end, Lance just wasn’t good enough.


End file.
